British Poetry: Romantics to Moderns

This version of English 40 offers a survey of British poetry from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. It fulfills one of the core requirements for the English Major. Most of the lecture-discussions will focus on the work of a particular poet; but the course will also raise several broader overarching topics. These will include the transition from Neo-Classicism to Romanticism and from Romanticism to Modernism; changing concepts of poetry and the poet; changing concepts of nature, culture, and the human mind; the Gothic and Orientalism; prophecy, faith, and the loss of faith; the country and the city; World War I and modernist irony; being and becoming; poetry and politics; love, sex, and gender relations. Poets included are Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Hopkins, Hardy, Owen, and Yeats. Requirements: attendance, oral presentation, one paper, one exam.